Portage girl's story to be included on CBS 48 Hours Mystery show 'Bullying: Words CAN KILL'

PORTAGE — Kristina Calco was an active teenager during junior high school. She was a member of the swim, volleyball and track teams in middle school and joined the junior varsity cheerleading team when she entered her freshman year at Portage Northern High School.

She also is one of many teenagers who have committed suicide because of bullying in recent years, sparking the interest of people nationwide who have started calling the act “bullycide.”

CBS is airing a special episode of 48 Hours Mystery, called “Bullying: Words CAN Kill,” at 8 p.m. Friday. The episode will be based on “Bullycide in America,” a book about Calco and six other teens who committed suicide.

“Sometime in middle school, a group of kids started to pick on her (Kristina). They basically just always told her how ugly she was,” said Kristina’s mother, Michelle Calco, of Portage.

Even after the bullying stopped during ninth grade, the other students’ words had stayed with her, she said.

Kristina’s tragedy, and those similar to hers, inspired the parents of these teens to collaborate on the book to tell the teens’ stories. The book was published in 2007.

Lori Thompson, artistic director, and her original cast of 10 teens created “The Bullycide Project,” a play based on the book, telling the stories of 10 teens who committed suicide between 2000 and 2010. The play, which is told in individual monologues for each teen, was filmed at Michigan State University’s Wharton Center in March.

CBS also will air a small segment about the episode earlier in the week, focusing on Kristina Calco’s story, as an introduction to Friday’s episode.

The play was created after Thompson was contacted by Kevin Epling, another Michigan parent who lost his child to suicide.

Epling went to an earlier play Thompson had created and gave her a copy of the book.

She was inspired to write a play to tell the teens’ stories, Michelle Calco said.